noone and a star stand, am to am

(life to life;breathing to breathing
flaming dream to dreaming flame)
united by perfect nothing:

I told you I loved you before my conscious mind knew it was true. That summer smelled like cigarettes and cheap beer; like sweat and sun and loneliness. I had been drunk every day for six months the night we strapped your mattress to the top of Casey’s jeep. You stood in my doorway in your pajamas, your Rabbit tucked under one arm. You were sad and brave and lovely in a way that made me want to invent new words. I loved you before my conscious mind knew how to love.

Three days or three weeks later: you tequila drunk in the passenger seat of your silly clown car, singing.

If you’ll be my star, I’ll be your sky.

Singing.

I need you so much closer.

You, dearest, were never meant to be anybody’s backdrop.

Last winter, through Ju’s kitchen window, you showed me the place you smoked cigarettes in your underwear. I imagined your winterpale skin, smoke pooling in cold pockets of air. Or maybe it was summer and the sun raised a layer of sweat across your exposed body, and the breeze shouldered some of your sadness. Sometimes late at night I smoke cigarettes on my roof, feeling lonely for that girl I never knew. I want to tell her everything will be fine. I want to believe everything will be fine.

When I was younger, I slept with my feet uncovered so I could run through my dreams. I clung to my bedpost so I could find my way back. Now I hold onto the pieces of myself I’m most afraid of losing, dig my fingers into my own ribcage as if I could hold myself together. You told me you’ll always be there when I come looking, but you are not mine to look for anymore.

I have been single for a year now. You are the first thing I think about every morning. Some days I wake slowly, imagine the fingers on my hipbone are yours.  Other days I wake up to the vacuum of your absence. I’m not delusional, just defined by the spaces you are not.

Two nights ago the lights stretched out below us, slow cars moving like sticky platelets through Missoula’s veins. We seared solar flares into our lungs. I let the smoke stun the swarm of words trapped inside my mouth. I didn’t mean to laugh, but we’re constantly straddling the line between tragedy and comedy.

And we laughed, you know, because sometimes you’d rather cry.

Yesterday, holding me like a baby knees to chest and my face pressed into the crook of your neck, I could have cried forever. You asked me why I’ll always choose the rain, and I don’t have an answer except I keep hoping it will make me appreciate the sun. You call me best friend and I call you home but in the end they’re all just different words for “never”. You told me agape. If nothing had ever changed we could still be in this place, drinking coffee and eating sandwiches. Or I’d be dead, or you’d be gone or everything would be wrong. Or nothing would be wrong. Parallel worlds are easier to get lost in than we suppose.

Yesterday, singing “happy birthday” and blowing out the candles in two breaths and wishing for I-don’t-know what. Yesterday, cutting into a cloud of pistachio pudding and chocolate cake. Nothing so sweet could ever be good for you. Nothing has changed, and that will probably always be problematic.

Tomorrow I will leave this town.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it

Imagine me somewhere: on a bus, at my desk, on a bus, in my bed. Reduce me to the essentials of existing, imagine me peaceful. Don’t check in. I’m tired of disappointing you. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the places that gravity feels lightest, where I don’t have to crawl. I’ll remember how to sleep again, remember dreams without you in them. I used to laugh when you talked about going back to Real Life, like somehow we could slip in and out of reality the way you put on a winter jacket to survive the worst of the cold.

I’m not laughing anymore.

-b